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Access to Financial Services in Brazil
The challenge of alleviating poverty and improving living conditions for the poorest populations is a formidable one. It is increasingly apparent that such a betterment of the lot of poor people requires an effort that spans all sectors of the economy and may not be easy to achieve through economic growth alone. Improved access to financial services helps poor people by enabling payment transactions that then bring them into the formal sector. Access to deposit services helps people save safely and thus handle fluctuations in consumption needs. Financial services also enable poor people to use profitable business opportunities and thus raise earnings. And financial services help better manage risk. Beyond the role of financial systems in providing economic stability and contributing to growth, there is an increasing awareness of the importance of financial services as a wider part of the development agenda.
Yet, there is relatively little accumulated knowledge of present levels of financial access in poor countries or of the factors that are important in expanding access. How should access be measured? The establishment of financial institutions or service outlets does not in itself guarantee access for poor people. Should access then be measured in terms of services actually used by them? Or by reductions in the unmet demand for financial services? These are some of the initial questions pondered by this study, which incorporates the results of a major survey conducted in Brazil in several cities concerning present levels of financial access and its impediments. Frequently, access to financial services has been popularly equated with access to credit. Yet credit needs are often described as a secondary financial need by poor people, whose need for a stable store of value for their savings or mechanisms for making and receiving payments is often paramount. One contribution of the present work is its attempt to unbundle the concept of financial access.
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